"Two whole weeks," Madeleine groaned. Then her face brightened. "Oh, I hope Karl comes to the lecture!"
***
In the car on the way home, it was Madeleine who sat in silence, while Charlotte made conversation with Maple, her father's chauffeur and valet. He was a sweet, gentle man, not an atom of unkindness in him. She was grateful for the comforting familiarity of his long, white-whiskered face. In the back of the Rolls-Royce, the smoky leather scent wrapped itself round her like a blanket and she began to relax at last.
She fell asleep for a time. When she woke they were in Cambridge and almost home, but her head ached and her throat felt dry and sore. Rain was sheeting along the tree-lined street as Maple guided the long bonnet of the Rolls through the gate to their house.
"Are you all right, Charli?" said Maddy. "You look as white as a sheet."
"It's nothing, I just feel as if I've got the flu coming on," Charlotte replied, coughing.
Madeleine shrank away dieatrically. "Well, don't come near me with it."
The Nevilles' house was a graceful villa of creamy grey stone near the Botanical Gardens, sheltered by trees and a high wall. Charlotte drank in the sight of it as Maple opened the car door for them. There was Sally, the maid, waiting for them in the porch, her thinness accentuated by the long black uniform, her hair as always in untidy wisps round her sweet, vague face. Next to her was Maple's wife Mary, a prim little hen of a woman who never gave a sign of liking or disliking anyone. They both smiled and stepped forward to welcome Charlotte and Madeleine home.
As Charlotte stepped inside and shook the rain off her coat, the homely scent of years of ingrained beeswax, tobacco and mustiness greeted her. The walls were panelled in dark wood, the rooms crowded with Victorian furniture. On dull days such as this its gloominess could seem oppressive, but at this moment it spoke only of peace and solitude.
Since their mother had died, the household had been presided over by Mary Maple, aided by a cook and a maid; not a large staff by some standards, but it had been hard to find good servants since the War. George Neville preferred a small household, and would probably have been happiest if he and Charlotte had lived there alone.
"Oh, I hate this house," Madeleine said with feeling, shivering as Sally took their coats and hats.
"Maddy!"
"Well, it's so dark. Just because I live here, I don't have to like it."
Their father came out into the hall to welcome them. He was wearing a tweed suit that had seen better days, a shirt with an old-fashioned stand-up collar. His grey hair—once as red as Maddy's—was thinning and his white moustache was stained yellow on the tips by tobacco. Charlotte loved him, respected him, was sometimes afraid of him; it shocked her that Madeleine could be downright rude to him, and not be cowed by his anger. Yet now it was Maddy who ran to kiss him, not Charlotte. She had never been demonstrative.
"Had enough of London at last?" he said, patting her arms awkwardly.
"No, never," said Madeleine. "We had a marvellous party last night."
"Hm? Was your aunt at this party?"
"No, she went back to Parkland Hall last week. You knew that."
He shook his head, torn between pleasure at seeing his daughters and entrenched disapproval of their gallivanting about in London. "She is supposed to be chaperoning you."
"Oh, Father, don't be so old-fashioned. We were at Fleur's last night, not an opium den."
He glowered at her, but Madeleine took no notice. "I didn't really want to come home, but Fleur chucked us out because she wanted to paint. Can you believe it?"
"Oh, well, the Season's over anyway, isn't it?" He glanced meaningfully at Charlotte. "Time to do some useful work."
They were walking into the drawing room as they spoke, a dimly-lit room that was all brown and crimson and ivory, the air busy with the ticking of clocks. Their father was fascinated by the workings of clocks and watches.
"Not me," said Madeleine, stretching out on the sofa. "I've been invited to lots of weekend parties in the country."
"Have you indeed? I shall have to consider that. You are not going on your own."
"Well, I'm sure Charlotte's not coming with me." Madeleine removed her shoes and flexed her silk-stockinged feet. She seemed oblivious to her father's stern tone; somehow she contrived to slide beyond his discipline like a fish through soapy hands. But Charlotte was enmeshed by his authority, could not bear to incur his disapproval. "Don't be grumpy as soon as we've arrived home."
"I'm not in the slightest bit grumpy, young lady. We'll discuss it after lunch." He looked at Charlotte. "And how did you enjoy all this debutante nonsense?"
She didn't know what to say. He must have guessed from her face that she'd hated it, but she couldn't bring herself to admit it, not in front of Madeleine. By the time she had composed an innocuous reply, Madeleine was talking again.
"Father, there's something I must ask you." Her tone became earnest and respectful, carefully dropping no hint of romantic interest. "Charli and I met a very nice Austrian gentleman last night who is interested in studying science at Cambridge. I suggested he come to your lecture in London next week so that I could introduce him to you. He'd be so very glad of your advice."
Charlotte expected her father to be put out. Instead he said, "Oh, well, I dare say it won't hurt to invite him up here, show him around. Does he know my field's experimental physics? Is that what he wants to do?"
Charlotte didn't hear her sister's reply. Her head was spinning. However irrational her feelings were, she could not endure the thought of a stranger coming into the house; it was almost a sense of foreboding, that once invited they would never be rid of him. She interrupted, "I didn't meet him. We don't know anything about him, Father, and you're far too busy. Maddy shouldn't have—"
"Charli, this is none of your business!" Madeleine said in exasperation. "What's wrong with you? He's only a man, not a sabre-toothed tiger."
"It is my business. I'm the one who works with Father, not you."
Madeleine's brown eyes narrowed. "What right do you have to tell me whom I can and cannot invite to the house? You have been completely impossible this whole Season. In fact you've ruined it for me!"
"What?" Charlotte gasped.
Their father tried to interrupt but Madeleine would not be stopped. "My first Season, it should have been so much fun. Instead I have you there looking like Banquo's ghost at the feast, not speaking to anyone, rushing out in the middle of parties, everyone saying, 'What's the matter with your sister?' and me trying to make excuses for you, 'Oh, she's just shy.' Well, I don't think you're shy, Charlotte, you're just an absolute, selfish, sick-making misery!"
Charlotte was too shocked to speak. It was true, Madeleine had tried to help; but Charlotte had been too busy brooding on her own failure to think that it might have hurt Maddy as well. She couldn't answer. Her face blank, all she could do was stand up and walk out.
She went upstairs to her bedroom, sat down at her dressing-table, and put her head in her hands. Suddenly her whole life was a dark vortex; her existence with her father not a refuge but a prison, because she could not face the bright coldness of the world outside. Failure loomed like a cloud, and at the centre of it was the look that Karl von Wultendorf had given her, which for no reason had filled her with terror. The quarrel with Maddy was the last straw. All this is my own fault… There must be something wrong with me. Why do I behave like such a fool?
Charlotte felt choked with guilt. She would have done anything to put things right with Madeleine. Yet she had never been able to express her feelings to anyone, not even to her own sisters. It was not done to show emotion. That was what her father had obliquely taught her to believe.
Why am I so terrified of life? I was all right until I went to London. At least I thought I was… but now I know that I'm not, that I have never been all right…
After a few minutes there was a sound, someone tapping on the door and opening it. She looked round, expecting to see he
r sister there, ready to make peace. Maddy was volatile, but didn't usually stay angry for long.
It was not her sister but her friend Anne Saunders, peering cheerfully round the door. Not waiting for an answer she strode in, slim and long-legged in a white shirt and riding breeches. Her cropped dark hair framed a strong face with dark eyebrows, a warm and lively expression. She was engaged to Charlotte's brother David and she had known the Nevilles since childhood; her father was their doctor. She had little time for Madeleine and Fleur, but she was Charlotte's closest friend. Charlotte had driven off endless potential friends by her aloof manner, but Anne had simply ignored it, persisting until Charlotte at last came to feel at ease with her.
Even with Anne, though, she dared not be completely open.
"The Prof said you weren't feeling well," said Anne. She often gave Charlotte's father that nickname, although he was not a professor. "Was London that exciting?"
"Hardly." Charlotte smiled wanly, pleased to see her. "Don't come too close, I think I'm getting the flu."
"Oh, I never catch things like that," Anne said dismissively. "Well, what sort of time did you have? Find a rich husband?" She sat on the edge of the bed, hands in pockets.
"God, no." Charlotte shuddered. "I don't want one, thank you."
"It doesn't sound as if you had the time of your life. Come on, this is me you're talking to. What's happening? There's a dreadful atmosphere downstairs, and here you are lurking in your bedroom. I know when something's going on, and it's not just the flu, is it?"
Charlotte took a breath so deep it hurt. Her lungs and throat were on fire. "It's just me being stupid. I hated it in London… so Maddy's angry with me, and I feel terrible about it."
"Maddy's angry because you didn't enjoy yourself?"
"Something like that. But it's my fault."
"It sounds as if it's her being stupid, not you," said Anne. "Why are you always blaming yourself?"
"I—" She paused, feeling that she was being accused of something. "I really don't see any use in talking about it."
"That's your trouble, you never do," Anne said gently. "I wish you would tell me what's really on your mind, Charli. All these years I've known you, and you still don't feel you can confide in me?"
"Of course I do, but it's nothing, truly. Just a silly quarrel. I'm much more worried about Fleur. I think she's taking cocaine."
Anne didn't look surprised. "It's the fashionable thing to do in her set, isn't it? I'm sure she's too sensible to do herself any harm. You worry too much."
"And Maddy's taken up with some awful man I can't stand."
"Oh, what's wrong with him?" Anne leaned forward, interested.
"I don't know. I didn't speak to him." Anne started to laugh and Charlotte said sharply, "Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I felt—oh, I don't know. It's this wretched bug, I'm under the weather. You'd better go away and come back when I'm in a more reasonable frame of mind."
"Well, if you like." Anne stood up, looking sadly at her. "Go to bed with a hot drink and some aspirin; that's the advice of the doctor's daughter. And don't forget David will be home in time for Madeleine's fancy-dress party; he'll cheer you up, even if I can't. Have you decided on your costume, or is it secret?"
"I don't know and I don't care!" she said before she could stop herself. "Oh, I'm sorry, Anne. That was uncalled-for. I'm just not—I'm sorry."
Anne went to her, put her hand on her shoulder. "I really am concerned about you, Charli. You're going to have to talk to someone eventually, you know."
Anne let herself out, leaving Charlotte feeling guiltier than ever. Anne had only been trying to help; she had all but driven her away. Charlotte longed desperately for friends, yet something made her reject them. An irrational dread of the unknown, of revealing any part of herself to outsiders.
Her father came to see her, felt her hot forehead and shook his head. "Get yourself to bed, m'dear," he said with a sort of affectionate irritation. "You're no use to man nor beast in this state, spreading your germs everywhere. Go on, I'll send Mrs M up with a hot drink."
Mrs Maple dosed her with aspirin and briskly tucked her into bed as if she were five years old. She was all business, no tenderness about her at all. Charlotte was glad when she had gone.
This is really quite funny, she thought as she lay sweating and shivering in bed, staring at the dark-panelled walls of her room. Only I could be glad to catch the flu. Now I shan't be able to go to father's lecture to the Royal Society, and it will be the first one I've ever missed… But I wanted a reason not to go, because I am too much of a coward to meet this gentleman friend of Maddy's. If I ignore him, will he go away?
She fell asleep. The fever extended its web of tendrils into her dreams, distorting every anxiety into a palpable enemy.
When she closed her eyes she could hear a weird, rhythmic noise coming at her from a great distance. She stood on a brooding, desolate shore; a sooty beach and an iron-grey ocean, separated from a watery black sky by the inkline of the horizon. She felt tiny and vulnerable under the sweep of the sky, helpless before the crashing power of the waves. And there were birds, flying slow and straight towards her, with a steady whump-whump-whump of wings. That was the hideous, monotonous sound she could hear. Wingbeats. Featherless primeval creatures with long, long teeth like razors. The only specks of colour were their blood-red tongues which slithered and hissed in cages of fangs. Steadily and malignly they flew towards her. Even though she knew they were only in her mind she could not make them go away. The terror of anticipation was a physical pain, unbearable, but there was nothing she could do to end it…
David was beside her. The beach was a sort of battlefield and as they waited for the birds to come he was cheerfully giving her instructions: "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes, old girl." She looked round and saw a bright green meadow sheened red with poppies behind them and she cried, "David, I've found a way out!" and she began to run and run towards the brilliance.
But he was not with her. She tried to turn back for him but couldn't, there was a vast trench in front of her and he was on the other side, with Anne, Fleur, Madeleine and Father. They were stranded. Charlotte was utterly helpless, she could not save them from the dark birds that bore down inexorably on vast black wings. But she would not desert them. She stopped and faced the creatures, and the agony of waiting became an electric heaviness in the pit of her stomach. Strangely thrilling, it felt, as if she dreaded the raptors and desired them at the same time. Distance had made them seem slow; but God, they were flying so fast and their dark evil faces were filling the sky. Then their mouths opened and the steaming red coils of their tongues came lashing out…
Every organ of her body tightened and she awoke, gagging with fear. Yet mingled with the nightmare she experienced a pleasure so intense that it left her breathless, shocked.
The darkness oppressed her, a warm breathing weight from which she could not struggle free… drenched in sweat, she found herself sitting up in bed, in the act of switching on the bedside lamp before she was properly awake.
She sat gasping for breath, her whole body a mass of pins and needles. Gradually the racing of her heart began to ease.
The light shone dim and warm on the oak panelling. A moody room, which sometimes seemed homely and comforting, at others full of dark, frightening corners. It seemed alien now, through the veil of night terror. Charlotte knew the nightmare was due to her fever, but the heavy spell wouldn't break. She glanced at the clock; three in the morning. Picking up the photograph of her mother that stood on the bedside table, she lay back and studied it.
Charlotte could hardly remember her mother, yet she missed her. It was at times like this that she would have liked her there, to make her feel safe. And sometimes she was sure her mother was actually beside her, the cool hand on her forehead not imagined but truly felt. It will be all right, darling. Go to sleep.
The portrait was more an icon than a real memory; she seemed so far away, this
slender, stately woman in Edwardian clothes. An unusual face, slightly too long but balanced by large, deep-lidded eyes, a full-lipped mouth. The nose was short and delicate. Although her expression was solemn, a slight lack of symmetry in the features made her look girlish, exquisitely pretty under a mass of shining hair. The faded sepia had been hand-tinted with coloured inks. The eyes were a rich violet-grey, the hair a warm brown frosted with golden-blonde.
Charlotte knew the colours were true, because she was the image of her mother.
Annette Neville had died giving birth to her last child, Madeleine. Charlotte had been less than two years old then, too small to remember much, yet there were fleeting impressions that remained; a swish of long skirts, cool white hands. Her father and mother laughing together. But then an endless night of screams muffled behind closed doors; had she dreamed that? Surely she could not have remembered it, yet it was there at the back of her mind; the screams and then the silence that forever afterwards rang with the echoes of her mother's pain.
Charlotte believed in ghosts. She believed in them as tangible phenomena that must have a scientific explanation, if only she could discover it. Some interaction between the places where the dead had lived and the minds of the living? She only knew that ghosts were real to the people that saw them. She often felt that her mother was there beside her, like a friend, radiating all the calmness and wisdom that Charlotte lacked.
Her father had never fully recovered from Annette's death. But at least he had Charlotte, who was so like her.
She could never leave him; he needed her. It was her duty to replace her mother in his heart… She did not articulate these thoughts, they were simply a formless knowledge that always hung inside her, heavy, familiar, sometimes dully painful although she did not know why. She was the photograph come to life, the image that must be kept the same forever.
Charlotte left her bed and went to the window, pulling back the net to stare at the rain-drenched darkness. She felt oppressed, webbed down into the pattern of her life. Her head was full of images. A glowing, sparking laboratory, nothing beyond it. Dark panelled rooms through which the living moved like ghosts and the voices of the dead still echoed. A pale face with amber eyes that looked straight through her…
A Taste of Blood Wine Page 3